Following on from our look at Community Management, Localization and Production, we'd like to show you another part of the Frogster team, and maybe one of the most important departments for the TERA project: the role of the Producer. In order to gather more insight in to this crucial group, we interviewed people working as a TERA Producer and they were kind enough to take some time to answer our questions.

Stephan and Julie, TERA’s Producer and Associate Producer!

First of all then, let’s tackle just what as Producer actually does! Ultimately, the Producers are in charge of all the project planning – both internal and external – from the high-level milestones down to the fine featured team tasks. You can probably imagine that this needs a lot of communication with other departments! In order to coordinate internally, and with our partners at En Masse, the Producers continually channel information, analyse risks, discuss deadlines and ensure that everything is on track to meet those final dates. Fortunately, Stephan and Julie have both been working in that field for more than 5 years, so they’ve got the juggling experience!

It probably goes without saying but with this focus on communication, hundreds of emails are involved – whether it’s working with Customer Support on procedures, supporting Localisation patches, discussing Marketing direction or any of the other myriad tasks that go in to successfully running a huge project such as TERA. Let’s not even mention the meetings to accompany this. Replying to more than a hundred emails a day and spending countless hours on a phone to keep things coordinated is no small task!

The time zones certainly don’t help either…

As much as with planning and communication, the Producers are here to set up and optimise the different processes that go in to keeping the TERA machine running. This ranges from scheduling and handling priorities, to escalation processes (for example, due to possible server crashes). Many unexpected situations, or ’risks’, need to be carefully thought of and analysed – through fancy risk analysis - before the game launches. Ensuring the continued quality of the service once the game is live is obviously high on our list of priorities and something continually planned for!

You can see already the impact that project management decisions have on the entire player base, and with those heavy powers comes a lot of responsibility!

We mentioned communication before, and this means to our fanbase too! If there’s a convention coming up soon, then the Producers will be heavily involved again as they handle a big chunk of the necessary preparations and, trust us, for a convention there is a *lot* to prepare.

Producers are the lifeline to our partners and so they have to move around the world - a lot! Regular trips to Korea and the United States take place every few months to bring together the management from all the companies involved on TERA. At these meetings they discuss ongoing and future development, hammer out the milestones, and much more.

As an international team working so closely with a Korean developer (Bluehole Studio), communicating important information can sometimes be a tricky task. Thankfully, our professional coordinator, Julie, is here to save the day when such issues arise! She’s not only here as a cultural expert and translator, but also supports the team in a huge number of ways. As the central coordinator for the teams in the two companies, her role can’t be understated!

Finally, the Producers must always have their ’finger on the pulse’ and be aware of the vibe in the community and any issues customers are facing. With this in mind, they are in continual contact with us - the Community Management team - as well as our Country Managers who they work with for marketing campaigns in each country.

Phew! So we hope that this article gave you a nice overview of the Producers for TERA. Do you happen to work in a similar position? Are your daily tasks similar? Don’t hesitate to give us your feedback, share your experience and ask us questions on the forum!

Link: Forum